jc blog - tales of a modern-day nomadic hunter-gatherer

This is the weblog of Intrepid Wanderer. You never know what you
might find here;
graphic descriptions of bodily functions, computer programming secrets,
proselytizing for the antichrist, miscellaneous ranting and kvetching,
valuable information on living off the land...
if you don't share my rather weird interests you may want to try
slashdot instead.

If you want to comment on anything you see here, try the new Facebook comments,
reachable by clicking the "[comment]" link at the end of each post.
If for some reason that isn't working, go ahead and email me,
jc.unternet.net. You know what to do with the first dot. Make the 'subject'
line something reasonably intelligent-looking or it goes plunk! into the
spambasket unread.

after reading a half dozen or so labels at Ley the other day, I finally found
a yogurt, Chilchota, that doesn't have a whole lot of crap in it. Mexican yogurts in general are full of various sugars and artificial sweeteners, but this one only claims
to have regular sugar (sucrose) and "stabilizers" (whatever the heck those might be) besides milk and cultures. it doesn't claim to have active cultures, but luckily it did, as it successfully seeded my most recent liter batch.

I was gifted the rest of a piece of borrego regional, locally
grown lamb, which turned out to be part of the neck. it was next to impossible
to slice the meat off it, so I boiled it for over an hour. then after it
cooled I could take the vertebrae apart piece by piece, and the meat almost
fell off as I did so. the spinal cord was pretty gross, but I ate that too.
[comment]

I got an answer on those strange markings found on outside walls and/or meter
boxes throughout La Paz: it's not burglars scoping out the place. it's the
mosquito abatement crew marking for their supervisors that they visited the
place. I still don't know what all the letters and numbers mean though.
[comment]

when you buy beef, at least half of what you're paying for is water...
eye of round, almost 3/4 (PDF)! that's why this dehydrated machaca is such a good deal, in addition to not requiring refrigeration for days on
end. I got a pricier brand, Choyera for MXN147/kilo (about USD3.24/pound) this time, but I think
I actually liked the cheaper La Economica better.
[comment]

I'm guessing botocore.exceptions.ClientError: An error occurred (InvalidParameterValue) when calling the CreateRoute operation: route table rtb-9adde4fc and network gateway igw-07058f60 belong to different networks means I can't
attach an Internet route to the default route table of a VPC because it's going
to be a separate virtual network interface.

documentation isn't necessarily sparse, but it's spread out over many pages,
and it's hard to find a step-by-step procedure to do anything using
the AWS cli or boto3. so I end up adding one thing to the code; testing;
getting errors with obscure or misleading error messages; Googling and analyzing; fixing, and going on to the next thing. each step can take literally hours.
it's a really tough slog.
[comment]

it turns out the biscuit mix I make is quite similar to this
tortilla recipe. the biggest difference is that for tortillas you need
to knead the dough for a few minutes, and you need to roll it out thin. I did
that, except instead of rolling I just flattened it against the cold griddle,
flour underneath and on top to keep from sticking, as best I could with the
palm of my hand. then I put a gob of coconut oil on the pan and heated it up.
while that was going on I took a single chile arból and
ground it in my molcajete and added it to the last 100g or so
of machaca I had; added water and heated the meat with coconut oil
and set it off to the side.

then I cooked the two tortillas I had formed, and made two tacos with the
meat mixture. they were delicious. 1 chile was just right; two would have been
far too spicy for my taste.

been making biscuits with machaca, dried shredded beef. I bought it
on the 29th and it's still looking, smelling, and tasting good without refrigeration. and it adds good flavor, protein, and fat to the biscuits. now I just
need to find out what spices will work with it; it still kind of tastes like
dog food.
[comment]